


Love Bade Me Welcome

by phoebesmum



Category: Sports Night
Genre: Angst, Happy Ending, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-04
Updated: 2009-12-04
Packaged: 2017-10-04 04:06:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoebesmum/pseuds/phoebesmum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone knows that Dan deserves better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Bade Me Welcome

**Author's Note:**

> Written September 2007, for leiascully's ficwriters_anon challenge; anonymous challenge, anonymous subject.

The notes begin coming his second year in college; his second year of being alone. A Valentine's card, first. His only one that year and, at that, one more than he had been expecting. The girls he sleeps with aren't the Valentines kind. The boys, either. The boys never even acknowledge him, not openly, nor he them. It is what it is.

The card? Just a tacky dimestore thing, generic hearts and red roses badly printed on cheap, flimsy paper. Nothing memorable, nothing beyond its mere existence. He would've shrugged it off, dismissed it as a joke, if not for the message inside.

_You deserve better_ is all that it says and, below that, the traditional, anonymous 'X'.

For no reason that he cares to acknowledge, his eyes blur. He tears the card in two lengthways, then once again, and tosses the scraps into the trash. But later that night, sleepless and desolate, he slips from his bed, retrieves the fragments, tapes them back together and hides them inside a stack of never-to-be-read lecture notes.

His mom had always sent them Valentines, from when they were tiny children right up until long after they should have been far too old (so his father said, frowning) for such nonsense. She'd fill them with poems, sketches, funny, slight and inconsequential, but none the less tender and loving for all of that, words as warm as the kisses and hugs she'd once shared so freely among them all. But not this year. No more, not ever again.

It _was_ a joke, of course, that card. They'd been talking about Valentines in the bar a few nights before, the free men laughing at the lameness of the tradition – "A Hallmark Holiday," Simon had called it – while the ones trapped in relationships wavered and hedged, torn between honesty and duty and the desire to have sex ever again, and the girls pretended airily that they didn't care one way or another – "I don't need a _card_ to tell me that Mikey loves me," Paula had said, smug, clinging to her boyfriend's arm, while 'Mikey' grinned bravely and only the whites of his eyes revealed a hint of his true feelings. He doesn't recall exactly what it was that he'd said – something quick and sharp and defensive, no doubt, camouflaged by as convincing a laugh as he could dredge up – and he can't now remember everyone who'd been there. It could have been any one of them. Any of them. And what does it matter anyhow? Like he said, it was only a joke.

He believes that. He has to believe it. It's too cruel, to think that there may be someone out there, someone who cares, someone who loves him as he remembers being loved, but who can't, won't, for whatever reason, come into the open and make themselves known. And he continues to believe it for almost a year, right up until he gets the second card. Christmas, this time, inappropriate as that may be, and as shabby and cheap as the Valentine, but there it is: the same writing, square, blunt letters so obviously disguised, the same pale sepia ink. He scans its message, smiles briefly, and props it on the mantel, camouflaged among its ill-informed but well-meaning fellows. And, come New Year, saves it, squirreled away with its mate.

He's almost unsurprised when the second Valentine arrives, but this one has to be hidden, quickly and furtively. He already has a Valentine's card this year, huge and gaudy, plush-padded and filled with words of passion and promise in big, cursive script only slightly marred by the smiley faces that dot the 'i's. That one is displayed on the bedside table, in clear and plain and evident sight, and has been reciprocated with one along similar lines, and with roses and perfume and chocolate. And, that night, he reaps his reward for all those things.

Come the third year and he's on his own again. He greets that year's card – still plain, but a little better in quality now, though the message is brief as ever – like an old friend, and allows it a place on the corner of his desk. Nobody comments, or even seems to notice it overmuch.

And so it goes, year after year after year. The cards keep coming: always the same message or one very like it, always plain and nondescript, un-noteworthy, unmemorable but to himself. He's almost thirty now and he finds, to his surprise, that he's anticipating Valentine's day. It's been a hard year; he's alone once more, as he has been more often than not throughout the decade, and, over time, he's come to find that the knowledge that somebody (unknown, nameless, faceless) – to know that somebody cares, even this much … it helps, after all.

But there is no card. He stares into his empty mailbox, a sense of abandonment flooding through him. He tries to shake it, tells himself he's being ridiculous – what does it matter, why should he possibly care? It was just a game, nothing real, ever – but it pursues him, possesses him, all morning. All morning, up to the moment he steps into his office.

There's a red rose lying across his keyboard; a heavy, cream-colored vellum envelope is propped against his monitor, his name scrawled boldly across its face in familiar sepia ink, a familiar square hand that – now he thinks – is not so very, very different to another, another that he knows almost like his own spidery scrawl. But he had never thought, never imagined, never dreamed –

No. That last's not true. He's dreamed, oh, _god_, has he dreamed! But there'd been ten years of marriage, and after that nothing but women, and never a word, never a hint, and how, how could he have dared to hope? To hope, and to be disappointed; it would have broken his heart.

That heart is pounding; his hands tremble as he reaches out, peels back the flap, draws out the card and reads its message.

_Don't you think it's time?_ is all it says.

He lifts his head, and meets his partner's eyes.

He wonders how he could have been so blind.

***


End file.
